I've always said that, growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident.

The monsters I thought about are those that don't fit in - those who think differently from the majority, the people of exception, outsiders. I wish that society would place more importance and value on these kinds of monsters.

It's interesting for me to sell Comme des Garcons in places it's never been sold before to people who might not have heard of Comme des Garcons.

I give myself limits - not only financial limits, but I also limit my method of expression, and from within those limits, I try to come up with something new and interesting.

There is a crying need today to have this truth heralded throughout the land that youth especially may appreciate and hold the freedom of the individual as sacred as did our revolutionary fathers.

I spent my teenage years in Paris when my dad was stationed there, and I'd look at women in their forties and think, 'That's the age I want to be.'

I grew up in the 'hood, but it was like growing up in Beverly Hills because there were so many superstars around.

We hope that the long darkness through which the Burmese people have lived may now be coming to an end.